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The 80s, when studly mullets flowed wild and untamed, wise-cracking robots complimented women on their software, and hand-drawn assailants advanced menacingly with pipe wrenches through the magic of rotoscoping. Mankind can never go back to that glorious time, but we can bring a little slice of it to us by for example, releasing Retro City Rampage in a free update for 33 year old PC operating system MS-DOS. The package also includes prototypes for Windows 3.1 and the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Also of note is the new Collector’s Edition available on the Retro City Rampage website which includes the game on a 3.5 floppy disk inside a retail box with NES dimensions, a cloth map, a Steam key, a manual, and some magic decoder glasses to find the hidden images within. Only a thousand units of the Collector’s Edition exist.

The developer behind the promotion states their motivation on the same page. Incoming excerpt:

‘Porting RCR to MS-DOS had been on my mind for years. It was something I wanted to explore before RCR was even released. Could I crunch it down to run on old PCs? A Pentium? A 486? Even a 386? How little RAM and HDD space could I get away with? Could I build an installer that fits the entire game on a single floppy disk? The computer programmer in me had this burning fascination, and I should’ve realized sooner that it was only a matter of time before I finally had no choice, but to finally scratch that itch and find the answers to these questions!’

Retro City Rampage is a tribute to 80s & 90s pop culture with a visual look reminiscent of the first 2D Grand Theft Auto games. The original version was released in 2012 and received generally favorable press.

Quick Take

Speaking diplomatically here, programming isn’t exactly my idea of an exciting career, but the developer speaks of such an unquenchable passion for programming that comes straight from the heart. There is purity in the challenge he undertook, and I admit for the briefest of moments I was touched. Maybe it’s just nice to hear from someone in the gaming industry who enjoys their job. Whatever the case, I have put off purchasing Retro City Rampage for too long.

Digital versions of Retro City Rampage can be found on GoG and Steam. Buyers automatically receive the latest version with the free DOS update.

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As English as fish & chips and twice as greasy, Mark has wielded a keyboard from the age of five and has a green belt in Taekwondo, proving his power level is more or less equal to that of a seven year old.